Presidential Address. Education and Training

I have worked for many years in education establishments and I have seen sufficient of young people to make me wonder just what it is that makes them respond differently to encouragement to learn. Nevertheless, I have tended to devote my energy to expanding the amount of ' encouragement to learn ' without discriminating too nicely between the many types of ' encouragement ' that go to make up the total. The impressions shall put before you this evening are no more than an assortment of ideas which I have tried to connect together in a coherent pattern. I believe there to be evidence for the validity of the ideas but in very few cases has any attempt been made to test this validity systematically. Some experienced educationists may reject some of my ideas (usually, I suspect, on grounds doubtful as those on which I have adopted them). So,
altogether, the field is set for one of those pleasant occasions when we can all differ with one another in the knowledge that, at the end, when stumps are drawn, no
one will have been proved right and no one wrong.
D.A.G. Reid